in town.’ Almost thirty-eight years old, Frances, Duchess of Loscoe, was as elegantly beautiful and as full of life as a girl half her age.
‘I arrived yesterday, Mama, and, hearing you were here, I came to pay my respects.’
‘And found only Lavinia at home. I am sorry. If I had known…’ She paused to look at the phaeton, while her groom unloaded armfuls of parcels from her carriage and took them into the house. ‘Did you arrive in that?’
‘Yes. I bought it for a song. Its first owner grew tired of it.’ He could not rid himself of the habit of justifying his purchases to her. If it had not been for her careful supervision when he was growing up, he would have dissipated his inheritance before it had been in his hands five minutes. Now, long after he had learned more sense, the habit remained.
‘I am not surprised. It looks very dangerous.’
‘No, it isn’t, Mama,’ Lavinia put in. ‘But it is very exhilarating to ride in.’
‘By that am I to assume you have been for a ride in it?’
‘Only a very little one to the park and James drove very sedately, I promise you.’
Frances made no comment as she led the way into the house and ordered refreshments to be brought to the drawing room. Then she took off her gloves and hat, carefully stroking the long curled feather into place before handing them both to a footman.
‘Now, tell me all your news,’ she commanded her stepson when all three were sitting comfortably with cups of tea in their hands. ‘There is nothing wrong at Twelvetrees, is there?’
‘No, but being a country landlord can be very trying at times, especially with the economy in the state it is. I felt like a little diversion.’
‘You would not feel like that if you were married.’
‘I cannot see how being married would make any difference to the work of the estate.’
‘No, but you might not find is so trying if you had a wife and children to fulfil you.’
‘Oh, Mama, not again, please. I promise to make a push on the matter this Season, will that satisfy you?’ He looked at Lavinia as he spoke, but she was smiling to herself and stroking the tortoiseshell cat which had climbed on to her knee, apparently completely unperturbed. If the Duke were to enter the room the cat would be gone like a streak of lightning.
‘For the moment. I do not suppose you have been in town long enough to receive any invitations yet.’
‘No, but I do not doubt word will soon go round and I will be besieged. Tell me what is planned and where you will be going, then I shall know whom to accept.’
‘Lady Graham is holding a ball…’
‘Don’t tell me Constance is not off her hands yet. This must be the third year she has tried to fire her off.’
‘James, I wish you would not be so vulgar,’ Frances said. ‘Poor Constance cannot help being plain, but I am sure some young man will recognise her worth before long.’
‘Well, it will not be me, so you may put that idea from your mind. But if I am invited, then I shall go, if only to dance with you.’
‘And me,’ Lavinia put in.
He inclined his head towards her. ‘That goes without saying, my dear. Now, what else is there?’
Although the Season was half over, the Duchess reeled off a catalogue of events, from musical soirées and routs to balls and picnics, not to mention a visit to the opera and another to Vauxhall Gardens. ‘That is, if this wretched business with the Queen doesn’t upset everyone’s plans.’
‘Then I shall look forward to seeing much more of you both.’
Lavinia began to laugh and they both turned to her in puzzlement. ‘What have I said that is so comical?’ he asked.
‘You have just said the same thing as Lord Wincote and in him you condemned it as bold and desperate. Are you desperate, my lord?’
‘Certainly not.’ Unwilling to enter into a discussion on the topic, he stood up. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you both.’
Lavinia sprang to her feet. ‘I will come to see you off, James.’
He smiled, took his leave of his stepmother, then left the room, followed by Lavinia. At the outer door, she took his hat and gloves from the footman and handed them to him. Her eyes were alight with mischief. ‘I shall see you tomorrow at seven round the corner in the mews,’ she whispered. ‘We do not want to wake the household, do we?’
‘Vinny, I do not think—’
Before he could go on, she had pushed him towards the door. ‘Good afternoon, my lord.’ He suddenly found himself on the step and the door firmly closed behind him. It was a situation he would never have put up with from anyone else; any other young lady treating him in that cavalier fashion would have been dropped immediately. But Lavinia was different. Lavinia was Lavinia, self-willed, to be sure, but there wasn’t an ounce of malice in her body; she had not meant it as a put-down, simply a way of preventing him from arguing.
He clamped his hat on his head, strode to the phaeton, climbed in and drove off, smiling to himself at the prospect of teaching her to drive it.
‘Vinny, what was all that about?’ Frances asked when Lavinia rejoined her. ‘Have you quarrelled with James?’
‘No, Mama.’ And Vinny, who did not see the need to hide it, told her about the encounter with Lord Wincote and James’s reaction.
‘He was only trying to protect you,’ her ladyship said. ‘You know he is very fond of you.’
‘That does not mean he may act as a substitute father. I am not such a ninnyhammer as to fall under the spell of the first man who pays me attention.’
The Duchess laughed. ‘No, for you demonstrated that very clearly when you had your come-out. Your dear papa thought you were being too particular.’
‘But you did not, did you? You know how important it is to feel comfortable and at ease with one’s choice.’
‘Of course. But there are other things to consider.’
Lavinia laughed. ‘Oh, I know. Good looks and mutual interests and money. I have heard it all before. But I want to be in love. You and Papa were in love, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. We still are.’
‘Then you will understand.’
‘Yes, but you have only just met Lord Wincote. You surely do not think you are in love with him?’
‘No, how could I be? I have barely exchanged half a dozen words with him. I simply wanted to tease James.’ What she did not say was that Edmund Wincote had the most mesmeric eyes she had ever come across. They seemed to have the power to turn her usually iron will to jelly. She wanted to see him again to be sure she had not dreamed it. And if she had not, to explore where the feeling would take her, James’s disapproval notwithstanding.
‘Teasing people,’ Frances said slowly. ‘has been known to rebound on the one doing the teasing.’
‘I know, but James asks for it. He is so…so…stiff sometimes.’
The Duchess laughed. ‘That is the last word I would use to describe him. What is it you do to him to make him behave so out of character?’ The question was a rhetorical one; Lady Loscoe had a very good idea, but it was not for her to point it out. She decided to change the subject. ‘When I left the house this morning, you were intent on doing some painting. How did it go?’
Lavinia scrambled to her feet, her eyes alight with enthusiasm, James and Lord Wincote both forgotten. ‘Come with me and I will show you.’
She led the way down to the ground floor ballroom and flung open